Shoppers across the UK are being urged to “refuse to buy” avocados in supermarkets that have been wrapped in plastic wrappers.
The move is intended to help Mother Earth by shopping in a more environmentally-friendly way to reduce plastic waste.
Author Isabel Losada tells shoppers that they should outright refuse to buy any avocados that have been wrapped in plastic to help the planet and send a message to supermarkets that they need to make a change.
Writing in her help book The Joyful Environmentalist, she said: “Plastic wrappers around fresh food like bananas, oranges, and avocados? Just refuse to buy them.
“Sometimes you have to be prepared to inconvenience yourself. If you go to a supermarket and the food you want to eat is wrapped in plastic, take ten minutes out of your day to speak to the manager and explain why you won’t be buying the wrapped bananas because you don’t eat banana peel.
“Do they care? Yes they do. This is capitalism and they care about every purchase. Meanwhile, go on adventures and find all the places locally where you can buy what you need without the plastic.
“Once you start this it brings the fun back into shopping. You are now an activist. We have a grocer’s where I live where I can buy 90 percent of my fruit and veg package and waste free. You may feel that your shopping habits won’t make a difference but there are millions of us.”
According to The Big Plastic Count 2024, UK households throw away an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of plastic every week – with around 60 pieces per household. This is equivalent to 90 billion tonnes of waste per year. Of this, 81% of plastic food waste comes from food and drink packaging, most likely from supermarkets.
As part of the UK Plastics Pact, supermarkets promised to make all of their packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, but results from the 2024 survey show that they are still miles off reaching that goal, so it falls to shoppers to do their bit to help.
Of course, small changes have been made by supermarkets to help combat plastic waste and now most yoghurts are sold without a film lid rather than a plastic one to cut down on plastic use.
Anti-waste charity Wrap has called for a government ban on plastic packaging for 21 fresh produce items in UK supermarkets, including avocados.
The charity estimates that a ban on plastic packaging on specified items when sold in amounts less than 1.5kg could eliminate 100,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables from waste annually and reduce single-use plastic film by 13,000 tonnes.
But Tesco has already started making moves to eliminate plastic waste from avocados by switching plastic packaging for cardboard.
The supermarket began a trial of the new packaging earlier this year, which also includes scrapping barcode stickers for laser etching, and said the changes could save more than 20 million pieces of plastic tray packaging from its twin pack avocados alone.
Tesco avocado buyer Lisa Gilbey said: “We’re always looking for innovative ways to reduce the environmental impact of our products, and cut down on plastic waste in the home through changes to our packaging.
“We’re really excited to hear customer feedback on our new laser-etched avocados, avoiding the need for a barcode sticker that can easily be forgotten and left on when recycling through household food waste.”
